From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2013 15:37:00 +0000

In Friday's Washington Post, a major story for university's in a blog post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/19/how-one-publisher-is-stopping-academics-from-sharing-their-research/

Elsevier is sending takedown notices for publisher pdfs of Elsevier
copyrighted articles on university websites, mostly individual author
pages. The University of Calgary was the first institution in North
America to report this new development from Elsevier. Calgary received
a letter from a firm called Digimarc which identified 32 examples of
articles Digimarc claimed violated Elsevier's copyright.

Also reporting on takedown notices are Harvard (23 articles) and UC
Irvine. It is possible many more North American institutions are
receiving these same notices as DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act)
notices are often delivered to IT departments, not to libraries.
Library institutional repositories do not seem to be a target, perhaps
because those sites often accept the author's final peer reviewed
article, not the publisher's pdf version. And many honor publisher
embargoes of content.

Elsevier's decision can in part be understood by reference to Tom
Reller Elsevier VP and Head of Global Corporate Relations in a website
posting at http://www.elsevier.com/connect/a-comment-on-takedown-notices
responded to questionis from the Chronicle of Higher Education b
explaining " Any author who publishes in an Elsevier journal can also
post and share other versions of their article, following some simple
guidelines that vary by the version of the article to be shared"

Elsevier has made the calculation that the final version of an article
is where their profitability lies, and so they have moved to protect
that version.

In contra to this, Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost and Librarian at
Calgary noted in the
Washington Post piece that feedback on published reserach, "is the
heart and soul of academe and it's really critical to the way research
benefits society broadly,".

By implementing rigorous toll access to all their articles, Elsevier
is in effect saying that the various "green " versions of articles out
there are not a threat. Scholars need the final version, the version
of record to cite, to read, and ultimately to trust.

This debate between Elsevier and authors is ultimately between
Elsevier and institutions, going to the core of what Higher education
is about. How long will institutions go along and support a system
that hampers scholarly dialogue?

Chuck Hamaker